Productively Creative, Creatively Productive.

I was always reluctant to take the productivity methods that I use at work and apply them to the creative endeavors that I take on at home. I was afraid that GTD, Personal Kanban, and the Pomodoro Method might make it too much like “work” and take all of the joy out of it.

I guess I thought that an album could just pop out of my head, complete and ready to go – with all the lyrics and arrangements already fleshed out, naturally.

About six months ago that changed. One afternoon I was moaning about how I hadn’t created very much work that was out there for people to listen to. That’s when it hit me: I hadn’t created any work because I didn’t treat it like work. I didn’t take it seriously.

I’ve discovered that if I want to set my sights on larger projects, I absolutely must treat it like work. In fact, treating it like a job is the only way any album, symphony, or opera gets done, it seems. That means showing up regularly at my desk and sitting down with the headphones, the staff paper, and the keyboard when I’d rather be in the other room sipping a manhattan with my wife.

I think I figured that out just in time. Because now I’ve got two projects in the works, and one of them is a Christmas album. That one needs to be completely recorded by Halloween in order to have the CD’s ready for shipping the week of Thanksgiving. That’s right around the corner.

So you know what I’ll be doing between now and then: attending to this business of artistic endeavor. Being productively creative, and creatively productive.